Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Forts, Mountains, and a Party

Molweni,

I have done quiet a bit in the last few days. I went on a tour of Parliament on Friday and then returned to the house for a lecture about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The TRC was a commission that allowed people to come forward in a very public forum and speak about the atrocities that they had committed during the Apartheid and ask for amnesty. This TRC also gave people a chance to talk about the hardships that they have faced as a result of Apartheid. It was an extremely interesting talk and was given by one of the research directors of the TRC. That night we built a fort and slept under it.

Saturday was pretty relaxed. We had a braii and watched movies under the fort.

On Sunday we climbed Lion’s Head, which is part of a range of mountains. It took about 4 hours but it was a lot of fun. On the way we got gatsby’s (enormous sub sandwiches with chicken and fries in them), returned home to watch a final movie under the fort.

On Monday I was at work from 12PM to 11PM, because it was the day of the party. I spent the majority of the day getting ready for the party and helping out with the Libraries Campaign. We have run into a major issue in the campaign. We have been forced to postpone the walk that we are having in September, which is supposed to be the major event of campaign. The walk is taking place in Cape Town so we need to bus learners in from all other townships and suburbs. The date of the event was going to be the September 2nd, but we recently discovered there would be a taxi strike starting on September 1st. We tried everything to get the learners there, but most of the options were rather dangerous so we had to postpone the date. It would have been dangerous because the way that we would have gotten the learners there would be from van companies which look similar to taxis. If people saw the vans driving during the strike in certain townships, it could result in attacks on the vans. So the we are changing the date to the September 22nd. The issue is that we have tons of printed material with the date as the 2nd, so now we have to cross out or draw in the 22nd on thousands of flyers. So I have been in charge of getting stickers to plaster over the old date that says the new date. Apart from that on Monday we had the party that I was planning for. It went well and we had a relatively good turnout. We had live music and people from Equal Education (including myself) talked about the organization and the on going Campaign for School Libraries. We got a lot of people to help out in the campaign, which was very helpful. All of the fellow service-learners and Ronel came along to support me, which was great. I think the people who came enjoyed themselves.

As for today, I am still working on the stickers and getting a new project to work on. Tomorrow, I will be returning to Parliament where the President Jacob Zuma will be speaking.